Many free and cheap ways to tune up your PC!

Introduction

    So, technology is advancing incredibly fast, dual cores, quad cores, new video cards, E.T.C. Your uber leet box of doom is becoming an old junker, pretty fast at that. You don't have to dish out for a new PC, so what do you do? Well I will help you squeeze out the final bursts of performance out of your PC! Now, for the boring warning stuff ^^

Disclaimer

    Some of the "hacks" "tweaks" and "edits" have slight chances, if not done correctly, to harm your precious PC. I am assuming that you have common sense, and for some of these tricks, if you think you are an inferior PC user, I encourage you to ASK QUESTIONS! And remember kiddies, Google is your friend! Now that you know that, I will also add that if you mess up your computer in any way, me nor Spongefish, nor your mommy, is responsible. It is your own fault.

Let's get on with the show, eh?

Step one: Clearing out startup applications

    Now, you have probably noticed that when you start up your computer, the Windows operating system will start with a lot of other applications also, these are a big part of your boot up time, and also affect system performance later on. To fix this, we will be using a windows tool called "Msconfig". This application is fairly easy to use, here, I'll show you.

1.  Hold you windows key, next to your CTRL and ALT key.
2. While holding this key, press the  "R" button on your keyboard.
3. This will open the run prompt. Type in "msconfig" without the quotes into this prompt.

 4.    This will open up the msconfig utility, now navigate to Startup

You will see a screen similair to this:

    Now, here is the semi-difficult part. Look around this list, see things you recognize? Things like QTTask, that is quicktimes "helper" to most people, its near useless. Things that you can recognize that have the names of apps, look for those. Then ask yourself: "Do I want this to initialize when I turn on my computer?". If you dont, just press the little check next to it, so it is not checked. Do that until you have only what you want or things you dont recognize, which are normally windows tasks.

Now press OK!

    You will get a message asking you if you would like to restart your computer, this is what you want to do.

 If you want to go on using your computer, that is fine, press no. The next time you reboot the things you disable wont start up. If you want the performance boost immediately, first: bookmark this article ^^ Then press yes.

Note: when you start up your computer it will tell you that you have used this utility, just close the windows that pops up, if it asks you to restart again after you close it, just press no. This is just Windows telling you that you are starting up with a minimized ammount of applications! 

 Step two: Download and install CCleaner

    Alright, so now your computer is starting up faster,  but you can't help to feel that your computers harddrive is dirty or clogged. Well it probably is! We can clean that up easily with an application called CCleaner, previously known as Crap Cleaner. It does just as its former name says! Cleans the crap out of your PC! I use this program personally once a week. It is very simple to use and can clear gigabytes of memory from your hard drive!

You can download CCleaner from:  http://www.ccleaner.com/download 

Once you download the installation file, just run it and go through it, it should be fairly straight-forward.

Now that is installed, go ahead and open it up 

Go ahead and press Analyze, this is going to let CCleaner analyze the "crap" in your PC. This will tell you how much things it can clean out, and how much space it will clear. Once it is done, I'm sure your jaw will drop at the number : P The first time using this application I got rid of 5.4 gigs from my second harddrive. After it has analyzed, go ahead and press Run Cleaner, this will do the actuall cleaning, and there you have it! Probably tons more space left!  w00t!

 Step three: Overclock your Nvidia video card!

Now, I understand you may be disapointed that I am only telling you how to overclock Nvidia GPU based cards, but please remember, I have a limit to my amazingness : )

On to business!

Now the first thing you probably think of when you think of overclocking is; cooling! Well with what I am going to show you here, this shouldn't be a problem! I will be showing you the software side to overclock your card, it is pretty hard to fry most video cards with simple software overclocking. Heres what we will be doing; we will be downloading an application that manipulates your Nvidia card's drivers to pump out faster clock speeds for the graphics processor unit, and your video card's RAM! This is fairly simple, and will increase your gaming, and other graphic heavy applications' performance by an astounding amount!

Let's get started! First we are going to have to download and install Rivatuner. You can get Rivatuner from:  http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163

Once you have downloaded the install file, go ahead and run the file, and go through the install. Once it is all installed, and all is well, go ahead and open up Rivatuner. This part should be fairly simple. Here should be the main window of Rivatuner 

Ignore the current red circles, we wont be dealing there. We want to follow the blue circles. Then we will be here:

Alright, so if your there, first things first: check driver-level hardware overlocking, this will enable the overclocking feature. Now, it should be set to  "Standard 2D" Go ahead and change it to "performance 3D".

Alright, before we go on, please do not raise your bars extremely high, or play "russian roulette" with your bars. Just listen to me. Also, make sure you have a 3D game or graphically heavy application to test your video card with.

Time to start overclocking!

Here is the loop you will be repeating!

1. Increase the core clock up 10 MHz
2. Press Test, then apply
3. Fire up a game, play for about 10 mins, see if you have any visible errors, marks on your screen, that kind of thing
4. Increase the core clock 10 MHz and do the test until you get any errors
5. Once you get the error, decrease the core clock by 10 MHz
   

Now do the same thing for your memory clock!

Now you have found your max stable clock speeds!

 To make sure your card isn't too hot, this is what I do:

1. Open your case
2. Find your video card
3. Find the GPU
4. On the bottom side of the GPU, put your finger on the circuit board area.
5. If it burns you, it's too hot, lower the core clock speed.

Note: Some cards will automatically underclock the card if they get too hot, make sure you check the clock speeds to see if they are lowering.

Note2: Go and set the clock settings to Windows startup once you have configured everything to your liking.

Bonus step!

Heres a bonus step that can help you make your PC the best! We will make it so Firefox will clear extra temp files and cookies every time you close Firefox!

1. Open Firefox
2. Go Tools >  Options
3. Go to the privacy tab
4. Choose  "Always clear my private data when I close Firefox"
5. Choose the things you want it to clear in the popup

Closing

    I hope you enjoyed this mega tutorial, and I hope you made your PC a great deal faster!

 If you have any questions or any feedback, whatever. Go ahead and email me at

Contact [at] KayosCorner.com

Or message me via SpongeFish

-Kayos

www.KayosCorner.com